Health-care organizations in Canada say U.S. President Donald Trump‘s latest change to child vaccine standards is “not supported” by evidence, and Canada’s guidelines remain in place.
Trump signed an executive order on Monday calling for revamped childhood vaccine recommendations that promote his longstanding belief that childhood shots should be spaced out into separate medical visits.
The Canadian Paediatric Society “stands behind Canada’s routine childhood immunization schedule, which is developed by health experts and based on scientific evidence,” according to a statement by the organization provided to Global News.
“Ensuring that children and youth receive all recommended vaccines according to the schedule is the best way to protect them against many serious illnesses,” the society says.
The Canadian Public Health Association (CPHA) also expressed it is “concerned” with Trump’s order.
“The recommendations set out in the Order are not supported by current evidence and should not cause Canadian parents or caregivers to delay or alter their children’s vaccinations,” the association stated. “Nothing in the U.S. Executive Order changes Canada’s vaccine recommendations.”
Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus criticized Trump’s order Wednesday, saying that the organization is “concerned that recent changes to U.S. immunization policy are not aligned with decades of evidence that show when children are most vulnerable to disease, when vaccines provide the strongest protection, how many doses are needed, and which vaccines can be given together safely.”
“Delaying vaccines or separating doses unnecessarily does not make vaccination safer and can leave children unprotected.”
In the U.S., the first MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) dose is generally given between 12 and 15 months of age. The second dose is recommended between the ages of four and six.
Trump’s new order will recommend separating the MMR vaccine into three different shots administered in separate visits and direct the nation’s health department to improve vaccine research.
In addition, the U.S. order says one-year-olds should have their shots separated into five separate visits, though it wasn’t clear whether he was talking about all the vaccines they receive or specific ones.
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Separate measles, mumps and rubella vaccines for children are not currently available in the U.S. Currently, there are 2,465 confirmed measles cases in the U.S. across 47 jurisdictions.
Even as the order calls for revised vaccine recommendations, states, not the federal government, have the authority to require vaccinations for schoolchildren. The order will advise states with school vaccine mandates to consider updating their laws to reflect the administration’s recommendations.
MMR is a combination vaccine that protects against three different viral diseases: measles, mumps and rubella.
In Canada, infants under six months of age are not considered for vaccination as “maternally derived antibodies can interfere with the immune response to the vaccine,” and the “efficacy and safety of the MMR vaccine has not been established in this age group,” according to Health Canada.
Infants under 12 months of age are not currently recommended for routine immunization with measles-containing vaccines in Canada as well.
For children aged 12 months to less than 13 years, Health Canada states that “two doses of measles-containing vaccine, using either MMR or MMRV vaccine, should be administered.”
“The first measles-containing vaccine dose should be administered at 12 to 15 months of age and the second dose at 18 months of age or any time thereafter, but no later than around school entry.”
Children less than 13 years old who were not immunized on the routine schedule are also recommended to receive “two doses of measles-containing vaccine, using either MMR or MMRV vaccine.”
Health Canada stated to Global News that Canada’s childhood immunization recommendations will remain “unchanged,” despite Trump’s latest order.
“Vaccine recommendations in Canada are grounded in the best available evidence and the Canadian epidemiological context. Childhood vaccination continues to be one of our most powerful tools to prevent illness and support child health in Canada,” the agency wrote. “At this time, childhood immunization recommendations remain unchanged.”
The vaccine changes in the U.S. come as measles cases have surged over recent years.
As of Aug. 1 this year, a total of 1,114 measles cases have been reported across eight Canadian jurisdictions.
Canada lost its measles elimination status on Nov. 10, 2025, a designation the country has held since 1998. The Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) stated at the time this was a result of “ongoing transmission of the same measles virus strain for a period of more than one year,” with transmission also most susceptible “among unvaccinated and under-vaccinated communities.”
More than 5,000 confirmed cases were reported in 2025, with Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Prince Edward Island, Quebec, Saskatchewan and the Northwest Territories all reporting cases that year.
Canada is eligible to re-establish its measles elimination status once transmission of the measles strain associated with the current outbreak is interrupted for at least 12 months.
On Aug. 8, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) released another epidemiological alert that called on countries across the Americas, including Canada, to “strengthen vaccination, surveillance and rapid outbreak response measures amid rising measles cases.”
Guatemala has reported 30,371 confirmed cases and 26 deaths, the largest number of cases reported in the region this year. It is followed by Mexico with 12,255 cases and 17 deaths, the U.S. (2,465 cases so far), Peru with 1,277 cases, and then Canada.
The organization cited the number of 2026 cases to be “the highest recorded in the Americas since 2004.”
“As of epidemiological week 28 of 2026, ending on 18 July, countries and territories in the Americas had reported 47,459 confirmed measles cases. A total of 44 deaths have been reported in three countries. The number of cases is more than three times higher than the total reported during all of 2025, when 15,011 confirmed cases and 32 deaths were documented,” the PAHO stated.
A similar alert was released by the PAHO on Feb. 3.
The largest measles outbreak in the U.S. in more than 35 years ended on April 27, with cases first being reported in October 2025 in South Carolina and nearly 1,000 were confirmed over about six months, followed by more than 600 cases in 2026 alone. There were at least 21 hospitalizations and no reported deaths.
This was not the only measles outbreak in the U.S. at the time, with more than 760 cases reported in West Texas between January 2025 and August 2025, including the deaths of two children, before the outbreak was declared to be over on Aug. 18, 2025.
In addition, the U.S. recorded more than 2,000 measles infections in a single year in 2025 for the first time since 1992, U.S. government data from January this year states.
A total of 2,144 confirmed measles cases were reported in the United States in 2025, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said.
This is a 652 per cent spike from 2024, in which the U.S. saw 285 confirmed cases of measles.
Among these, 2,119 measles cases were reported by 45 jurisdictions across the U.S., while 25 were reported among international visitors to the U.S. The CDC also reported that three people died of measles in the U.S. in 2025.
